Why my Windows Xp is not booting after installationg Fedora core 8?
 

Hello, I am a begginer to linux. I have a dell Latitude D630 laptop. It has a 150G hard drive in which I have made two partitions one of size 103G with windows and the rest I have just installed fedora core 8 and I have configure grub to boot windows first.

The boot loader gives me booting options but when I choose to boot Windows XP it doesn't boot anyone but fedora boots fine.

Previously I had three partions in which one of them I installed fedora after windows installation and It was doing the same thing. I thougt that was the problem so I decide to format and create two partitions in which one I installed windows and there after fedora 8 in the rest.

What might be the problem? please help me.

Mndeme

you have to go to gives us some more information. here is what we need.
open up a terminal and becoame root. then go to:
nano /boot/grub/menu.lst
and attach over here the output. press contol+x to exit

How does your grub.conf look and what errors are you receiving on bootup?

In the more recent distros, the config file is almost always called menu.lst

Look in /boot/grub and you will see what you have.

What you are looking for in the config file is an entry like this:

more detail from grub.conf
 

Binary Dreamer;

Below is what appears in menu.lst

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,1)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda3
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=1
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,1)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.23.1-42.fc8)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.23.1-42.fc8 ro root=LABEL=/1 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.23.1-42.fc8.img
title Windows Xp
rootnoverify (hd0,4)
makeactive
chainloader +1
~
I edited it by adding make active but no change


When booting windows I i stack just at strat up with the message on the black scree;
Booting Windows XP
rootnoverify (dh0,4)
makeactive

Error 12: Invalid device requested

Press any key to continue.....

When pressed it gets me back to the grup boot option




And here are my disks partitions
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 48419836 3617172 42303352 8% /
/dev/sda2 295555 16270 264024 6% /boot
tmpfs 512572 12 512560 1% /dev/shm
/dev/sda5 103731672 44936368 58795304 44% /media/disk

According to your GRUB config file, it is looking for Windows on partition 5 of the first disk. (GRUB counts from 0)

Please post the output of "fdisk -l". Assuming that Windows is really on sda1 (as implied by the above), then change the Windows entry accordingly. In "grubese", sda1 is hd0,0

Your entry in the grub.conf you posted shows (hd0,4) as the partition to boot windows. You didn't post your fdisk output so we're just guessing but what do you have on sda1, Recovery partition. (hd0,4) is your fifth partition which would make it a logical and windows won't boot from a logical partition unless another verison of windows is on a primary according to microsoft.com. There's a menu.lst in Fedora but it's a link to grub.conf. Most every other distro uses menu.lst. Posting your fdisk -l output would be a good idea.

Below is the output for fdisk -l

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -|
> ;
bash: syntax error near unexpected token `;'
[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x41ab2316

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2 12915 103731705 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda2 * 12916 12953 305235 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 12954 19176 49986247+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 19177 19457 2257132+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda5 2 12915 103731673+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
[root@localhost ~]#

It would be easier to read the fdisk output if you posted it inside [ code ] [ /code ] blocks.

It looks like the NTFS partition (/dev/sda5) was created inside an extended partition (/dev/sda1). That does seem odd. Normally you would have an NTFS partition on /dev/sda1. Reduce the size before installing Linux. Create a /boot and /swap partition and the put the root / and /home inside an extended partition.

I wonder if you entered the grub shell when booting and entered:
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

it it would boot. Maybe there really isn't an extended partition at all and instead you have 4 regular partitions.
I prefer using fdisk -ul so that the start and end blocks are listed instead of the cylinders. You don't get rounding errors then. Normally the first partition would start at block 36 but don't bet the farm on it. I think that you need to post the output of "sudo /sbin/fdisk -lu" so we can see on which block /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda5 are supposed to start.

Below is the outpu for fdisk -ul

NB
In the linux partition, I have 300M for boot, 2200 for Swap and the rest 48800MB for root

/dev/sda5 seems to be really a logical partition, and not flagged as bootable of course.
I wonder how win agreed to install there. Did you boot into xp after this installation? I can't imagine how.

I think a simple solution is to delete anything and reinstall both, xp first (don't make the first partition extended, leave it for the 2nd, 3rd or 4th place). So, xp will be in a primary partition, that you will check that is flagged bootable. Linux partitions don't need to be primary and don't need the boot flag set. Of course, backup any important files before reintalling.

Was on the microsoft support site which indicates xp needs a primary partition (supposedly, vista can boot from a logical?). The exception to this is that you could put xp on a logical in two circumstances. The first I mentioned above, another windows OS on a primary. The second is a boot partition on a primary?

I'd agree with masterclassic, that seems the only solution. Maybe someone else will have another solution??

windows normally wants to be first... the lil' cry baby. then do a grub-install that you can boot with the grub bootloader.

I got it...at last it worked
 

Than you for your assistance.

I formated the whole dist, then I installed Win XP in 50GB partition. there after I installed fedora in the rest of the disk and i force boot, swap and root to be primary partition.

It was a miracle when I saw it boot since I strugled with it the whole of this week removing and installing OS till yesterday when it worked. I have fedora core 8 and win Xp all working fine.

But one more question? how do I make my wireless card work in fedora. it works fine in windows but never seen in linux.
please help

First you need to do some research and find out which chipset your wireless card uses. Some of the chipsets have linux drivers and some have to use ndiswrapper with windows drivers.

It is a Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN Mini-card...now I don't know how to find out the chip it uses...not sure but i think the cipset is Chipset: BCM4315 / BCM22062000